


one more off key anthem

by DrowningInStarlight



Category: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Imprisonment, Rescue Missions, Superheroes, Team Bonding, because here it is!, did you want a taz: commitment/bright sessions style superhero au?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-06
Updated: 2019-08-06
Packaged: 2020-08-10 20:05:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20141224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DrowningInStarlight/pseuds/DrowningInStarlight
Summary: It was Wilde's fault they were lost.Featuring: break ins, superpowers, and team bonding. Oh, and Hamid pops.





	one more off key anthem

**Author's Note:**

> thanks to bri for beta reading! thanks to the whole rqdbfc for being endlessly lovely! thanks to fall out boy's rat a tat for the title!

It was Wilde's fault they were lost, Zolf thought bitterly.

The grey corridors of the Meritocratic facility they were infiltrating were absolutely identical, the arrows on the walls labelled uselessly with strings of incomprehensible letters. They had been aware of the potential difficulty, Grizzop had been hacking the servers for months to even get floor maps, but still. Wilde was supposed to be the one who’d checked this stuff, and they'd been wandering aimlessly for far too long.

They passed another sign,  _ EK-TS-L-W-G:B _ , and Zolf stared at it resentfully. 

According to Grizzop's research, there was a reason it was all so cryptic.

"It's so the experiments can't find their way out of the building," he'd explained in the van on the way to their drop off point. "Even if they do manage to escape."

"That's awful," Azu had said, pulling on her gear.

"They're experimenting on unconsenting civilians to make superheroes," Grizzop had pointed out. "Of course it's going to be awful."

"I hate that we used to work for them," Zolf had muttered to Wilde, who was sitting in the corner, resting his head against the side of the van.

"We didn't know," Wilde said, not lifting his head. "The Meritocracy are the most powerful superheroes in the world, Zolf. I don't think it's really surprising they managed to fool us, do you?"

"We should have known, we worked for them for years," Zolf maintained, but they'd had this argument a thousand times since abandoning the Meritocracy. Zolf felt guilty, Wilde felt guilty but refused to admit it, they'd fight, then they'd come back together to save the world. It had got to they point where they could skip all the drama and just get on with the saving the world stuff.

Well. Saving the world was probably an exaggeration, nowadays. Maybe it always had been. Zolf and Wilde's powers were only grade D strength, coming with a whole host of issues. But the Meritocracy's control over the world was tenuous, and they'd desperately needed Anomalies, even ones like Zolf and Wilde.

Hence, the secret Meritocratic facilities built up and down the country. Hence, the experimenting, which escalated terrifyingly quickly from morally ambiguous to morally  _ wrong _ . 

The thing is: Anomalies have no discernable patterns. The powers aren't hereditary, aren't affected by circumstances of birth, are virtually undetectable until suddenly you can shoot fire from your fists, or something. They were a mystery, an  _ anomaly _ .

There was only one thing that was obvious about Anomalies. They were getting rarer. No one knew why, but it made people question why the Meritocracy, the last of what was apparently a dying breed, should be ruling them. The Meritocracy, of course, had no answer, and so the Harlequin Resistance was growing every day.

Zolf didn't know exactly when the snatching people off the streets if they showed the slightest sign of Anomaly powers and locking them away for exhaustive testing had begun. But the moment he and Wilde found out what was going on, they’d cut and run. How could they not?

Unfortunately, the Meritocracy doesn't like loose ends, and you don't get ends looser than two erratic Anomalies going renegade. Zolf and Wilde had known that damn well, so they'd turned to the Harlequin Resistance. If anyone would shelter them, surely it would be the sworn enemies of the Meritocracy? But they were turned away. The taint of the Meritocrats truly was inescapable, Zolf had thought despairingly.

They'd ended up striking out alone. At first it had just been Zolf and Wilde, faking names, hiding in shitty hotel rooms, and trying to help people by the cover of darkness, but it hadn't taken long for them to run into another duo doing the same thing. Azu and Grizzop were an easy addition to the little renegade gang, and they hadn't looked back. Four against the world.

They weren't stupid. Even with four of them, there was no way they could take down the Meritocracy, as corrupt as it was. All they could do was set their sights lower, save people here and there. But that didn't mean they couldn't  _ try _ .

So, here they were, deep inside a classified Meritocratic testing facility, and most importantly: utterly, utterly lost.

"When you said break in and steal intelligence, this wasn't what I was imagining," Azu said, as they hurried round another bend.

"Me neither," Zolf said. "We have twenty minutes and counting until the cameras come back online, Wilde."

"I know, I know," Wilde said. "Look, it's not my fault the security in this place is so tight we can't get Grizzop's signal. Hell, it's not my fault Grizzop decided to take the hit for me yesterday and can't be here." 

Zolf knew Wilde well enough to know that even if Grizzop trying to be all self-sacrificing wasn't Wilde's  _ fault _ , he definitely felt like it was his  _ responsibility _ . He also knew Wilde well enough not to bring that up. Azu had done what she could, but her healing powers had limits, so Grizzop had reluctantly agreed to wait with the van.

"You said you'd looked at the plans of this place," Azu pointed out.

"I did," Wilde said. "I got us in here, didn't I?"

"You did," she sighed. "You really, really did."

The passage forked again, they chose a path at random.  _ HSHAT-SR-F-S-G:A _ the sign read, and Zolf glared at this one too.

"Nineteen minutes," he said.

Wilde scrubbed a hand over his face. "I am-- I am sorry," he said. "Haven't really been sleeping again lately."

The tension softened a little in sympathy. Wilde's powers of illusion deathly exhausted him to use, but had only exacerbated his natural insomnia. It was a killer cycle. Zolf hadn't noticed it getting this bad again, but he should have. Wilde refused to take care of himself, and Zolf was sure that if not for his own efforts, and more recently that of the whole team, Wilde would have worked himself into the grave a long time ago.

Azu gently bumped her shoulder against Wilde's. "We'll be fine," she said. "Nineteen minutes is plenty, right Zolf? This place can't be that big."

"Last resort, I'll try to blast us out," Zolf said. 

"You think it'll work?" she said.

He shrugged. "Won't know ‘til I try."

Wilde's side effect was exhaustion, but Zolf's didn't work like that. Instead, sometimes his power just refused to respond. Half the time he was just a normal human being, with no powers at all; but the other half of the time he had the whole ocean at his beck and call. It was unpredictable, and infuriating.

"Sorry I can't be much help," Azu said. She had grade C healing powers, stronger than Wilde's or Zolf's. Her healing had kept the team alive more times than Zolf cared to count. It didn't hurt that she was also 6'6" and a dab hand with an axe. She didn't like to talk about the side effect of her power, the way she experienced the pain of whoever she was trying to heal, but Zolf had seen her face after healing Grizzop. He was always worried she was going to push herself too far.

"Azu," he began, "You've saved us so many times, don't--" he stopped as they skidded around another corner only to come face to face with a door. "Fuck."

"What now?" Wilde said. The door had an ID scanner and looked completely airtight. AUTHORISED PERSONNEL ONLY was printed in block text.

"How much time do we have?" Azu asked.

"Seventeen minutes," Zolf said. "We can't waste time backtracking. Okay. Stand back."

"Are you sure? I could still try to fool the scanner." Wilde suggested, voice casual but a glint of concern in his eyes.

"Wilde, stand back," Zolf said. He closed his eyes and reached for the power. Sometimes when he did this there was nothing. Not even an absence, just  _ nothing _ , nowhere for him to reach. He'd never asked for this power, wasn't even sure he liked it, but the fear he felt when it wasn't there was sickening. Today, though, ( _ thank you, thank you) _ the sea responded. He felt it rushing through his veins, filling his ears with the crashing of waves, he couldn't breathe, he didn't want to breathe--

Then the moment passed, and the wave smashed into the door, wrenching it off its hinges. It crashed onto the floor beyond it, and Zolf winced, shaking off droplets of water.

Azu and Wilde looked a little stunned the way they always did after he used his power, even though they'd seen him do it enough times by now.

"You coming?" Zolf said, a little self consciously, and stepped into the room he'd just broken into. The others followed without a word.

It was pitch black. Azu's torch clicked on first, a bright white beam cutting through the shadows onto plain walls. Wilde and Zolf turned theirs on simultaneously, and illuminated the only thing in the painfully bare room.

It was a cage, maybe five foot by five foot, tight metal mesh reflecting the torchlight. Azu gasped. There were people in there, Zolf realised, two figures huddled close in the very centre.

"Fuck," Zolf said again.

"Who are you?" one of the people asked. He looked Egyptian, and his voice was squeaky with fear as he shielded his eyes against the torchlight. 

"Are you okay?" Azu asked, going closer to the cage.

The other person, taller than the squeaky one and deathly pale, pulled him back. "Don't trust them, Hamid," she said. "Could be a trap."

"They blew the door off, Sasha!" the Egyptian man protested.

"That just means they're convincing, is all," the other one said. "There's no way out of this place, we're in too deep now."

"That's not true," Azu said, distressed. "We can rescue you, take you home! Where are you from?"

At the mention of home, Zolf noticed both their faces changed. Sasha's went angry and Hamid's went hurt. Despite both being sat at the bottom of a cage they looked like they were tensing for a fight.

"We don't have to take you anywhere," he hastened to add. "We can just get you out of here. I'm Zolf Smith, that's Azu and that's Wilde. We're Anomalies, but we don't work for the Meritocracy. We're rogue agents."

"Do you know how to open..." Azu gestured helplessly to the cage.

"It's some kind of power restricting field," Hamid said. "So we can't just break out. Sasha...?"

Sasha looked reluctant. "I don't..."

"We don't have any way of proving that we are who we say we are that couldn't be faked," Zolf said. "And we're not going to force you to come, but this could well be your one chance to get out of here. The Meritocracy..."

"They'll never let us go," Sasha said, with dull resignation. "Not after what they've done to us. We're their prize specimens." 

"Sasha," Hamid said quietly. "We can't give up."

They shared a glance. It was one Zolf was intimately familiar with. The Meritocracy had always had a system of duos, pairing up Anomalies to watch out for each other. After leaving, he'd started to think it wasn't just a buddy system, it was a fail safe-- if an Anomaly went bad, then there was at least one person who knew all their flaws, all their tactics. Someone the Meritocrats could use. The system was obviously important enough to them that they'd continued to use it on their experiments. Zolf knew the kind of bond that developed from learning how to use your powers side by side with someone. It was more than just work colleagues or even team mates, it was family. 

Sasha sighed, deeply. "Fine. It's controlled over there," she nodded to a closed control panel on the wall. "It needs a code or something? But I reckon I could talk you through hot wiring it."

"Sasha's really good at this stuff," Hamid said proudly.

"Right," Wilde said, speaking up for the first time since they'd entered the cell. "You, Sasha, was it? Talk Azu through getting you out of here. Zolf, time check and a word, please?"

"Ten minutes, and yeah, sure." He followed Wilde to the edge of the room. "What's up?"

"We need to think about what we're doing," Wilde said in a low voice. Zolf opened his mouth, but Wilde put up a hand to stop him. "Obviously, we're not leaving them here. If nothing else, they're witnesses. But you heard what that one said. If they're the Meritocracy's prize experiments... We aren't going to be able to fly under the radar any longer, Zolf. Are we ready for that?"

"Honestly? I have no idea."

"Yeah. Me neither." Wilde's face was inscrutable in the near darkness. Zolf could only glance back at the cage, and think if they'd only made a couple of different decisions-- not running when they did, for example-- then it could be the two of them locked away in the darkness here. Would anyone have to come rescue them? He doubted it. 

"We don't really have a choice, do we?" he said after a moment, looking back at Wilde. "As you said, they're witnesses. And you know we were always going to have to take a stand at some point. We can't keep running forever."

"Okay," Wilde said.

"Okay?" Zolf repeated, taken aback.

"I'm not going to fight you on this. We can't leave them here, so you're right. We'll take a stand. After all," he shrugged, "If we had been just a tiny bit unluckier, could have been us in here."

"Yeah. Exactly." he paused for a moment, then added "Thanks, Oscar."

"What are you thanking me for?" Wilde said, voice bemused, as they headed back towards the centre of the room.

"For not being bastard enough to die on me," Zolf said.

"Still time yet, my friend."

"Isn't there always?" They shared a wry smile. Hamid stared at them, as Sasha gave hurried instructions to Azu.

"--yeah, that wire... No, just there--"

"Can you run?" Wilde asked Hamid.

"Yeah," he replied, "But, er, before you disable the field you should probably know--"

Before he could finish Sasha crowed in triumph and the mesh cage smoothly slid away in two neat halves. It had been hard to see before, still pitch black except for their torches, but the instant the cage opened, light flared up.

But it wasn't the strip lights overheard filling the room suddenly. No, in fact, it was Hamid  _ catching fire _ .

He put a hand out to frantically push Sasha away, she scrambled backwards. Zolf looked up as the fireball surrounding Hamid grew, swirling higher and higher. It wasn't illuminating Sasha, though-- she was still cloaked in thick, pitch darkness. As she reached a hand out towards Hamid from on her back, the darkness  _ flowed _ , stretching out and swirling within the fire.

A fire alarm started screeching somewhere down the corridor, and it startled Zolf into motion. Without even thinking he reached out for the ocean, and it answered his instinctual call with vigour. If he’d had half a second more to think, he’d have  _ hated  _ the way his panic response had been to invoke a power that wasn’t even his half the time. 

But as it was, the water drenched down almost instantly, soaking everyone, Zolf included. The fire sputtered out, leaving Hamid knelt on the floor, breathing frantically and dripping wet, with Sasha still on her back beside him. The ceiling above them was stained black with soot.

"Okay," Wilde said slowly, flicking a wet strand of hair out of his face. "That's new." 

Sasha dragged herself upright, the water making her hair spike up like a frightened porcupine. The darkness had faded back into the background, no longer coiling around her.

"Thank you," Hamid said shakily. "I can't control-- I didn't mean--"

Zolf took a step towards him, but Sasha stepped sharply between them, glaring warily at Zolf. He put his hands up in surrender and took a step back as Sasha helped Hamid up, carefully keeping herself between him and any of the others.

"We're not going to hurt you," Zolf said. "But we really need to move. We disabled the cameras but we only have five minutes until they come back online. Are you good to walk?"

Hamid clung to Sasha's arm but nodded. "We're okay."

"I could carry you, if you like?" Azu offered. "Not in a, you know, pitying way, I just often carry people if their powers get too much." Her eyes slid to Wilde.

"That would be nice, actually," Hamid said. "If you don't mind, that is?"

"Of course not!" Azu said. She turned to Sasha and said "I promise I'll be careful with him."

Sasha stared at her for a long moment, but then seemed to come to the conclusion that Azu wasn't faking her concern, and let Hamid go.

Zolf checked the time again. Wilde noticed the tension in his face (they really had been working together too long when they could read each other so exactly) and started hurrying them towards the door.

"--if this is the experiment containment wing," Wilde muttered as they left, "Then the exits should be over towards--"

___

  
  


They barely made it off the grounds before the cameras all clicked back to life. Scrambling through the hole they'd cut in the wire fence, Zolf waited until they were all out before following himself. They only had to run a few hundred metres into the undergrowth before their earpieces regained signal, and they winced simultaneously as Grizzop's shrieks became audible.

_ "Hello? Hello? I swear if you fuckers don't answer me this second I will come in there and drag you out, harpoon through the chest or no harpoon through the chest--" _

"Grizzop, we're reading you," Zolf said, quickly. "The security was tighter than we thought, they had some kind of blocker for outside signals, other than the one we already hacked through."

_ "Ha! I  _ knew _ it was too easy! Did you get the info?"  _

Sasha shot him a suspicious look, and Zolf tapped the earpiece in explanation. "It's just Grizzop, he's our fourth guy, Azu's partner."

Sasha didn't respond, but she stopped glaring, which Zolf counted as a win.

"Well," Azu said, setting down Hamid gently, "We got... something? Or, well, someone?"

  
  


___

  
  


"You did  _ what?" _ Grizzop shrieked.

"We couldn't leave them, Grizzop," Azu said. "And then Hamid..."

"Popped?" Sasha offered from the corner of the van she was curled into.

"Hey!" Hamid said.

"That was almost exactly what happened, yes," Wilde agreed.

" _ Hey!" _

_ Fuck, _ Zolf thought.  _ They fit right in. _

The van lurched as Grizzop took a screeching turn. The moment they'd reached the van Grizzop had hurried them in, and now was driving at terrifying speeds. Any other time Zolf would be reminding him that not all of them were used to high speed like Grizzop was and could he slow down before he killed them all? But today, after what they'd just pulled, the speed was good. If they could get away, they could find somewhere to hide.

"Wilde," he said, "Got any ideas of where to stay?"

"Three towns over, that shady hostel, perhaps?"

"Oh, god. No, you're right."

"What's the problem with it?" Hamid asked.

"Everyone will assume we're there to have an orgy," Zolf said glumly.

Hamid choked. "They'll  _ what?" _

"Yeah," Zolf said. "We've been on the run for a while, we've got very good at finding the places people will make all the wrong assumptions."

"I suppose it would be a good cover..." Hamid said dubiously.

"Mate, Zolf and I are ace, we don't like it any more than you," Grizzop said. "But you're high priority. You'll be missed, probably already have been, right?"

"Yeah," Sasha said.

"As long as we'll be safe," Azu said solemnly.

"No one will look there," Wilde said. "I can promise you that."

  
  


___

  
  


The room they were given was not big enough for the six of them. Fitting everyone in when they were just sitting around was hard enough, Zolf didn’t even want to think about how sleeping was going to work.

Hamid was in the shower in the tiny adjourning bathroom. Sasha was sitting on the windowsill, her hair still damp. Wilde was sprawled over the sofa as Zolf, Azu and Grizzop sat on the bed, making the springs creak ominously.

"Fuck Valentine's Day," Zolf said. Every room had been booked except this one, and he was still annoyed by the wink the receptionist had given them. 

Sasha was letting little trickles of darkness flash between her fingers, twisting it round and round. "S'good," she said. "We're harder to track now."

"True." He reached hesitantly for his power, and found nothing. If the Meritocracy tracked them down now, he'd be helpless. "I'm not gonna push, but... What were you doing in that facility?"

The darkness in Sasha's hands shifted and solidified into blades for a moment, then drifted away again. "The Meritocrats were kind of making Anomalies, or, like, people with powers, anyway."

"Did it work?" Azu asked.

Sasha spread her hands, demonstrating the way the darkness flowed. "Yup. Me and Hamid, we're weapons for them. Grade A, no limitations, we're the only ones who didn't die in testing. We survived, dunno how." She spoke dispassionately, like it was something that had happened to someone else.

"That's so awful," Azu said, under her breath.

"Didn't work quite right, though, did it?" Sasha continued. "They fucked up. It's hard to control. That's why Hamid popped."

"Grade A powers are hard enough for natural Anomalies to control," Wilde said. "No wonder you two are struggling."

"How did you get there?" Grizzop asked. "The Meritocracy aren't big on volunteers nowadays, are they?"

Sasha snorted. "My uncle wanted to get rid of me and my cousin, so he sold us for parts, like, I dunno, a broken car or something. Hamid..."

"I went so my sisters wouldn't have to," Hamid said, from the doorway. He went over and sat on the floor, beneath where Sasha was perched, still towelling off his hair.

"They were after your sisters?" Grizzop asked.

Hamid sighed. "My brother is part of the Harlequins-- well, all my older siblings are, actually. But it was my brother who got caught, and the Meritocracy offered to give him a free pass if one of us would take his place."

"Fuck, Hamid," Zolf said.

"So you took it?" Grizzop said.

"Yeah," Hamid said. "I couldn't let-- Aziza's successful, she's an opera singer. She's married, wants kids. Saira... she's the leader of a whole branch of the Resistance. She's doing important work, more important than I even realised. I... wasn't really doing much?"

"And now you two are Anomalies," Azu said.

"Yeah. I presume Sasha's demonstrated. I'd rather not, thank you, my flames get... out of control."

"Yeah, better not then," Zolf said. "I don't think I'd be able to put it out this time." In answer to Hamid's questioning expression, he added, "My power comes and goes. Right now? Nothing."

Hamid looked like he was about to ask a question, but Sasha cut over him. "So what are you going to do with us?" she asked bluntly.

"What do you mean?" Azu asked.

"You know we're dangerous. You gonna keep us here, use us to fight your battles? Or, dump us and run now you've realised how much trouble we'll be to hide?"

"Sasha," Hamid said, but it was less of a  _ don't say that, we'll be fine _ and more of a  _ behave and maybe they'll feed us before doing anything to us _ .

She nudged his shoulder with her leg. "I just don't want any more surprises." 

"We aren't going to do anything with you," Wilde said. "We aren't monsters, you know."

"If you'd been locked up in a lab, would  _ you _ know that?" Grizzop sniped at him.

"Do you not think my face is trustworthy, dearest Grizzop?"

"Your face is certainly  _ something _ ."

"Come on, you two," Azu chided. "They're scared."

"We're not scared," Sasha mumbled.

"Maybe we are scared!" Hamid said at almost exactly the same moment. "Maybe! Just a bit!"

They glared at each other.

"Enough, everyone," Zolf cut in. He looked at Hamid and Sasha. "We're not going to keep you here against your will, but we're not going to abandon you.”

“Of course we aren’t,” Azu agreed. “You’re one of us, both of you.” 

“I honestly don't know why you'd want to stay with this lot--" Zolf carried on, shooting a look at Wilde, "--But. If you want to, you're welcome."

Wilde sat up, more serious. "We can't promise you anything, remember. Not safety, not peace, not a happy ending."

"Wilde is right,” Azu said. “But we can promise friendship. People to watch your back."

"And really shit food,” Grizzop added. “And even shittier places to sleep. Hope you liked the van, because guess what! And,” his face got serious, too. "We can’t promise you victory, but we can promise you revenge.”

Hamid and Sasha looked at each other.

"Don't think we're likely to get a happy ending, anyway," Sasha said quietly.

Hamid looked sad. "No. But it might be good to have people on our side. And the food's got to be better than in the lab, right?"

"Yep," Sasha said. "And... Revenge sounds pretty good, too."

"Yeah," Hamid agreed softly. "It does."

"Well, then you're hired," Zolf said. "Welcome to the team."

"Who knows, maybe you'll live long enough to regret it," Wilde said cheerfully.

" _ Wilde!" _ Azu said in horrified amusement, but Grizzop gave an unexpected cackle that set everyone off. Hamid's giggle and Azu's guffaw were unashamed, and even Sasha sniggered behind her sleeve. As they sat around in the shitty room with its creaky bed and dusty floors, Zolf thought  _ okay. We can do this. _

_ Six against the world. _

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> come chat on tumblr @drowninginstarlights!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [one more off key anthem [PODFIC]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21065519) by [Cryke_Audio (Crykea)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crykea/pseuds/Cryke_Audio)


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